“Now, O’Hara, careful!  Back off a little!—­don’t let it sway!  There—­that’s where I want it.  Get a ladder and clamp the tops.  Pitch it a little forward—­more!—­stop!  Fix those pully ropes; I’ll make things snug below.”

[Illustration:  “‘Now, Miss West,’ he said decisively.”]

For ten minutes they worked deftly, rapidly, making fast the great blank canvas which had been squared and set with an enormous oval in heavy outline.

From her lofty eyrie she looked down at them as in a dream while they shifted other enormous framed canvases and settled the oval one into place.  Everything below seemed to be on rubber wheels or casters, easels, stepladders, colour cabinets, even the great base where the oval set canvas rested.

She looked up at the blue sky.  Sparrows dropped out of the brilliant void into unseen canons far below from whence came the softened roar of traffic.  Northward the city spread away between its rivers, glittering under the early April sun; the Park lay like a grey and green map set with, the irregular silver of water; beyond, the huge unfinished cathedral loomed dark against the big white hospital of St. Luke; farther still a lilac-tinted haze hung along the edges of the Bronx.

“All right, O’Hara.  Much obliged.  I won’t need you again.”

“Very good, Sorr.”

The short, broad Irishman went out with another incurious glance aloft, and closed the outer door.

High up on her perch she watched the man below.  He calmly removed coat and waistcoat, pulled a painter’s linen blouse over his curly head, lighted a cigarette, picked up his palette, fastened a tin cup to the edge, filled it from a bottle, took a handful of brushes and a bunch of cheese cloth, and began to climb up a stepladder opposite her, lugging his sketch in the other hand.

He fastened the little sketch to an upright and stood on the ladder halfway up, one leg higher than the other.

“Now, Miss West,” he said decisively.

At the sound of his voice fear again leaped through her like a flame, burning her face as she let slip the white wool robe.

“All right,” he said.  “Don’t move while I’m drawing unless you have to.”

She could see him working.  He seemed to be drawing with a brush, rapidly, and with, a kind of assurance that appeared almost careless.

At first she could make out little of the lines.  They were all dark in tint, thin, tinged with plum colour.  There seemed to be no curves in them—­and at first she could not comprehend that he was drawing her figure.  But after a little while curves appeared; long delicate outlines began to emerge as rounded surfaces in monochrome, casting definite shadows on other surfaces.  She could recognise the shape of a human head; saw it gradually become a colourless drawing; saw shoulders, arms, a body emerging into shadowy shape; saw the long fine limbs appear, the slender indication of feet.